Today’s guest, Kate Connell Potts, relays to Shannon her particular love for teaching clients on a one-to-one basis. In her friendly, bubbly manner, she shares why her passion aligns with this teaching format and how teaching private classes can serve you and your clients.
Kate lives with her husband and young son in Iowa City, Iowa. She went to College for Criminology and Psychology and carried on with her lifelong love of swimming by studying Aquatics.
Kate’s connection to yoga began in her teenage years, taking a class on a whim, she noticed the movement felt effortless. Her relationship with the practice led her to teach after finishing college. Kate led classes in many forms and her experiences (including her work with swimmers,) helped her define what she wanted to hone in on; private classes. Her private classes began, in part, when she was contemplating where to teach yoga and perceived that clients would benefit from establishing their yoga practices at home.
The fulfillment she found teaching one-on-one was something that Kate wanted to share with others and does so in a warm down-to-earth way, calling herself a “Private Yoga Teacher’s Best Friend.” Kate produces and offers a variety of resources to other yoga teachers that include: her book The Art of Teaching Private Yoga, blog posts, online courses and in-person trainings which has taken through the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.
3:45 How Kate came to practice and then teach Private Yoga Classes
11:05 How to begin teaching or expand your Private Yoga Classes
14:00 Establishing your Private Classes -whether you’re a new or seasoned teacher
16:50 Your ideal client - PFPP (Perfect Fit Private Partner)
18:30 Charging for Private Classes when establishing yourself and as you move forward
20:30 Intake and Assessment- a holistic approach
23:13 Creating Packages- “5 is best”, why Kate feels one-offs are problematic
26:00 A Couple of ways to Package your sessions
27:35 Working towards a confident money mindset
30:15 How to approach setting a timeline with your client: acute settings e.g. pre or post surgical, pre or post natal or on a trajectory e.g. creating and sustaining an at-home yoga practice
35:15 What Kate found transformative about teaching in a private vs. group setting and establishing professional boundaries while still showing up as human
40:55 How can you work with Kate? Her offerings and resources.
Kate's Website: You and the Yoga Mat
Kate's Facebook page The Art of Teaching Private Yoga
Kate's Private Yoga Teachers Facebook Group
Client In-Take and Assessment Cheat Sheet
Book: The Art of Teaching Private Yoga by Kate Connell Potts
Article: How One-Off Sessions Could Kill Your Private Practice by Kate Connell Potts
Shannon is excited to welcome the dynamic duo Paloma Neuman and Renee Gauthier, experienced yoga retreat planners. If you’ve played with the idea of planning a retreat, this episode will give you a sense of the process involved in planning and will perhaps inspire you to plan a group yoga retreat yourself.
Renee Gauthier is based in San Diego with her husband and daughter and has taught yoga for 10 years. Traveling to many different places to teach, along while navigating a period of loss in her personal life left Renee emotionally and physically depleted. This led her to make the choice to live her life in a more conscious manner. Yoga retreats appealed to Renee because she wanted to provide space for others to heal and live wholeheartedly.
Paloma Neuman lives in San Diego with her husband in son and much like Renee found herself feeling depleted and looking for a new focus in her career. Paloma had a powerful connection to yoga and while she chose not to teach yoga, the practice has become a life passion. Another major driving force in Paloma’s life is travel. Describing her desire for travel in her bones, she merged yoga with travel to create My Dharma Yoga.
Paloma serendipitously met Renee when she attended a yoga class and they immediately connected. The two began working on events and benefits that were both successful and fun finding they complimented one another. Out of this feeling Rock Your Yoga Retreat was born.
Now, Renee and Paloma not only plan and lead retreats, they help others do what they have found so fulfilling using many tools such as workshops, online courses, and the Facebook group Travel, Teach and Thrive for Yoga Teachers.
8:00 How Renee and Paloma got started with yoga retreats
19:15 Benefits of hosting a yoga retreat
22:30 Starting with smaller retreats
24:50 5 Key Elements of Leading a yoga retreat
26:55 Who is your ideal attendee? What do they want and what do they need?
30:35 What helps to make the planning and decision-making easier?
32:30 The retreat begins way before the first day when everyone meets
34:50 Marketing plan for your retreat
36:10 VIP wait list for your retreat
37:25 Budgeting and pricing your yoga retreat for success; list of retreat expenses, be aware of “sneaky” expenses
46:05 Why retreats planned every year are so beneficial “the bigger picture”
48:45 How do you know if you are ready to host a yoga retreat?
53:30 Can you be on retreat when you are hosting one?
57:00 How you can work with Paloma and Renee
1:00:05 Where Paloma and Renee would love to go on their next retreat
Links
5 Key Elements of Leading a Yoga Retreat
Travel, Teach & Thrive for Yoga Teachers FB Group
Email: contact@rockyouryogaretreat.com
Maclean’s Article: Why Canada is the only country in the world to celebrate Victoria Day by Alan Parker
On this week’s episode Shannon welcomes Joanne Pineau. Joanne is a yoga teacher, educator, and author whose enthusiasm for the healing power of yoga for both mind and body impressed Shannon when she attended one of Joanne’s courses on managing sciatic pain.
Joanne’s passion has led her take numerous trainings and certifications in the many facets of body healing. This has enabled Joanne to share her valuable wisdom with others through her 20 years of teaching yoga, her expert knowledge of sciatic and lower back pain, and in practicing Reiki, Thai Yoga Massage, not to mention her writing and workshops.
Joanne has her 500 YTT, an Honours Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology from the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, and taken countless other trainings.
She is the owner and operator of Inner Journey Yoga Therapy and works at Synergetic and Wellness Centre.
Joanne is a mother of six and lives in Thornbury, Ontario.
3:00 How Joanne began specializing in sciatic pain management
3:20 What is the difference between sciatica and sciatic pain? What is piriformis syndrome?
6:55 Anatomical link between sciatic pain and the piriformis muscle
8:50 Five actions yoga teachers can take to address their clients’ sciatic pain:
1. Ask the students what they’ve experienced
(including professional advice and treatment they’ve received)
2. Poses that help
3. Understanding the seriousness of nerve compression
4. Try to determine your client’s level of pain
5. Include pelvic stability techniques in class
16:40 Importance of strengthening the iliopsoas muscles and poses to engage muscles
18:10 Sacroiliac joint instability
18:34 Importance of teaching posture through poses such as staff and mountain pose in class
19:20 Importance of teaching posture outside of yoga classes (how to hold themselves when sitting and standing,) to bring symmetry and length through the spine
21:16 Adding interest to what may seem like basic poses that benefit the management of sciatic pain
22:45 Importance asking your students a lot of questions to find their pain comfort zone and go-to poses for the individual
25:15 The trust and appreciation students will feel if you take the time to listen and try to understand their pain, find poses that work for them- there is no need to worry you aren’t an expert in this area
27:20 Joanne’s workshop and class offerings such as her Lower Back Pain, Sciatica, and Pelvic Health exercise program
Links
Joanne’s Website: Inner Journey Yoga Therapy
Joanne's Classes and Workshops
Synergetic and Wellness Centre
Book: Stop Sciatic Pain by Joanne Pineau
Book: The Psoas Book by Liz Koch
Today Shannon welcomes Tracey Eccleston to discuss a topic that is often difficult for yoga teachers: money.
It may seem contrary to aparigraha (that non-attachment, non-greed yama that Patanjali outlined in the eight limbs), but Tracey reassures us that taking care of our finances allows us to care for self and others. As you will hear, she loves looking at the business side of yoga and is brimming with valuable advice.
This episode covers how to value your time so you can decide what to charge for your services with confidence, managing your finances so you have money for retirement, the concept of a 10/20/70 income mindset and much more.
Tracey began yoga teacher training while attending Wilfrid Laurier University, finding herself interested in the many facets of the practice. This led her to study at the Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health in Lennox, Massachusetts. Since then she has gone on to receive her E-RYT 500 certification.
Tracey is the creator of the Foundations of Chair Yoga & Chair Yoga Therapeutics teacher training and is the lead instructor at Ageless Arts & Yoga School located in Paris, Ontario. Here, Tracy offers 200-hour Yoga teacher trainings twice a year along with chair yoga and is thrilled to offer her popular Kayak Yoga and Meditation workshops that combine many of Tracey’s interests.
Tracey also shares her yoga internationally through her travels and online class offerings. Keep an eye out for the many yoga classes and trainings on The Ageless Arts Yoga & School website.
4:15 Establishing your value as a yoga teacher
5:25 Is a one-hour class really an hour worth of time?
7:55 How Tracey sets the prices for her classes
9:15 Things to consider when setting your price
10:45 Retirement plans for yoga teachers
11:20 10/20/70 money mindset
12:45 Tracey’s teaching schedule
15:00 Class package concept and early bird rates
15:45 Don’t spend your income until you earn it (and the importance of a refund policy)
17:00 Hiring an accountant to guide you
18:35 Guilt associated with charging for your services- how you can pay yourself and give back to the community
21:20 Tracy talks about her innovative kayaking yoga
The online Money Mindset Workshop with Rosslyn Kemerer
Thursday, May 25, 2017
10-11:30am EST
Cost:
$45 CAD [including downloadable replay video]
Kayaking Yoga and Meditation with Tracey
Biz Chix Episode 216: Is this a Business, Hobby or Charity?
Biz Chix Episode 241: How to Learn to Profit First with Mike Michalowicz
In that episode with Natalie Eckdahl, Mike discusses letting go of our traditional equation of:
Sales – Expenses = Profit
And talks about how when we let profit come last in the equation – it actually will come last in our real life. So instead we switch it around to be this equation:
Sales – Profit = Expenses
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So many thanks to Rob for editing this podcast the week before his wedding to the beautiful and amazing Lindsay.
Also huge gratitude for Laura, for putting the show notes together for all of the yoga teachers.